from rules to decisions, harvesting and governance

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From Rules to Decisions, Harvesting and Governance: A Recipe for Consistent Agility Ryan Trollip

Practice Director,

Decision Management

Fred SimkinSolution Architect

Dave HeckerothBusiness Rules Lead

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CONNECT WITH US:April 10, 2023Public | Copyright © 2014 Prolifics 2

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Agenda


The Story Decision Modeling Governance Rule Harvesting (using a COBOL KA approach)






The Story


Decision Modeling is the methodology that will be applied to the process of modeling, testing deploying, reporting on, and reengineering institutional business logic to ensure that the rules derived from that logic are complete, consistent, correct and current. It provides a structure that can be shared and understood by both the business and IT, facilitating communication and governance and diminishing risk

Governance constitutes the defined and enforced steps that will be followed in the extraction of the business logic, engineering it into business rules and decisions, deploying and testing, moving the decisions into production and manage their total life cycle

Rule harvesting is the process of identifying and extracting business logic, which is exists in applications, institutional policies practices and procedures, and domain experts throughout the enterprise, so that it can be effectively expressed, managed, maintained, and shared throughout the organization






Decisions . . . . Overview


What is a Decision ? Where are the Rules and Decisions ? Why do you need Decision Modeling ? How do you implement Decision Modeling ?






A Little History


In the beginning was AI John McCarthy and Co. discover “its about rules” Feigenbaum goes Commercial

The Problem with Inferencing is… Opportunistically Speaking Creating a Sequence

Perez and Rappaport:Nexpert/FICO Blaze-Knowledge Islands Lukose: ART*Enterprise –Phases ILOG-Projects and Ruleflows

You talkin to me ??? Everybody doin there own thang

The Big Idea! Let’s make a Decision What we have here is a failure to communicate Models (some assembly required)






What is a Decision ?


A container for organizing the business logic within a particular task in the business process

An end point or final decision for a chain of business logic

A set of organizing principals/guidelines/standards for identifying, extracting, modeling, and testing business logic within an application process






Where are the rule decisions







Why do we need Decision Modeling ?


With decision modeling development collapses to the minimum, speeding up time to market

In a classic development cycle, there are extensive handoffs from each step in the process, creating potential disconnects……and even greater inefficiencies caused by inevitable rework cascading backward across the entire cycle






How do you Implement Decisions Modeling ?


First…Contact Prolifics the leading provider of Decision Management Services!

Together, the next step is to evaluate where the client is on the Business Rule Maturity Model.







How do you implement Decision Modeling ?

Select an approach or create an approach tailored to your company needs

Capture your business rules (Dave will speak to this)

Model your business process to identify decisions Model your business decisions







Model the Decision Process






Where are the Decisions?






Examples of Decision Models






Business Logic detail is captured

One Conclusion and all required Conditions are identified

Rule Patterns are identified

Examples of Decision Models – Rule Family






Examples of Decision Models






Summarizing Decision Modeling

Provides a container which organizes rules about specific task in the process flow and the relationships between rules.

Improves Time To Market while insuring tat business logic implemented in applications is complete consistent, correct and current.

Provides a mechanism for insuring clear communication between the Business Owners of the rules and IT






What is Governance?

A defined and enforced set of steps that will be followed in the extraction of the business logic, engineering it into business rules and decisions, deploying and testing, moving the decisions into production and managing their total life cycle






Roles and Responsibilities

A set of roles with meaningful titles and associated responsibilities that are mapped specific tasks within the governance process





http://www.google.com/url?sa=i&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=images&cd=&cad=rja&uact=8&docid=a5snEf8XoDoSpM&tbnid=JHSayFZXZ06OpM:&ved=0CAUQjRw&url=http://successful-team-2013.blogspot.com/2013/02/characteristics-of-successful-teams_14.html&ei=8ZD3U8L_I4yxyAS8yoCYAg&bvm=bv.73612305,d.cGU&psig=AFQjCNHwglQXposUhPkmvK-PjhT5Ceze1g&ust=1408819788301003


Actors Roles Responsibilities

Originators Service Requestor

Determine need and provide clear and concise description of requestProvide clarification as necessary

Business Line Service Requestor

Determine need and provide clear and concise description of requestProvide clarification as necessary

Rules Author ODM Developer Support the development of the rule projects infrastructure and the rule services integration.

Rules Validator ODM Developer Developer (different than the Author), who performs a peer review of the changes made by the Author

Manager

Manager Reviews the work of the Author and Validator to ensure the change(s) are accurate and ready to be deployed

Deployer Implementer Takes the approved change and pushes it to production. Deployer then notifies Author of the success/failure of the deployment

Product Architect

Administrator Provides admin services to the ODM system and platform. Provides assistance with problems or issues within the tool.

Examples of Roles and Responsibilities





http://www.google.com/url?sa=i&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=images&cd=&cad=rja&uact=8&docid=a5snEf8XoDoSpM&tbnid=JHSayFZXZ06OpM:&ved=0CAUQjRw&url=http://successful-team-2013.blogspot.com/2013/02/characteristics-of-successful-teams_14.html&ei=8ZD3U8L_I4yxyAS8yoCYAg&bvm=bv.73612305,d.cGU&psig=AFQjCNHwglQXposUhPkmvK-PjhT5Ceze1g&ust=1408819788301003


Tracking

A method of accounting for the progress of work through the process workflow






Testing and Improvement

“In process reporting” including response time and number of times a request must be returned to the client for additional information

Work load monitoring for rule writers for load balancing and unit, regression and simulation testing

“Post Process Monitoring” at a variety of levels of granularity including, but not limited to, rule performance and impact (speed and effect on the overall performance of the project) and Usage over specific time intervals






Governance Workflow






Request Process






Research Process






Project Process






Rule Governance Summary

Governance must be enforced It must include roles and responsibilities Governance must be flexible to respond to

change Governance must be measurable






Rule Harvesting (Overview)

Why: General discussion of need How: Methodology What: Review of the harvesting deliverables Who: Review the roles and responsibilities When: Timeline for harvesting?

Decision Service (DS) Testing Harness Overview, Methodology and breakdown

Speeding up the rule harvesting process Investigation, Awareness, POC, Tool Selection, Pilot &

Purchase






Why harvest rules from code (Cobol)? Cobol and other code resources are becoming

rare Platforms that execute Cobol code can be

expensive Cobol logic changes require IT resources Business rule logic can be easier for SME to

verify Business rule logic can be easily deployed to

decision services Business rule resources are easier to find Many tools to help automate business rules exist

in market






How - What is our Methodology?






Rule Harvesting (Mining) is hard work !!!!






Reverse Engineer all / part of programs

How - Rule Harvesting- Scope






Reverse Engineer all / part of COBOL programsReverse Engineering – Other knowledge sources (inline-jcl, stored-procedures, ETL jobs, tipsheets)

How - Rule Harvesting - Scope






Reverse Engineer all / part of COBOL programs

Business Rule Implementation

(IBM ODM)







Reverse Engineer all / part of COBOL programs

Other Rule Coordination Data, IIB, Reporting







How - Deliverables for COBOL rule harvesting?

COBOL program

Flows

High Level SME

Document

Translation Document

Classification Document

Rule Requirements Document

ODM Decision Service

ODM Results Document

Technical Business AnalystODM devpr / Decision Analyst






What- Rule Harvesting deliverables: pgm flows

COBOL program

FlowsTechnical Business

Analyst






What - Rule Harvesting: translation documents

Technical Business Analyst

Translation Document






What - Rule Harvesting: SME documents

High Level SME

DocumentTechnical Business

Analyst






What - Rule Harvesting: classification documents

Classification Document

ODM devpr / Decision Analyst

Rules

Classification






What - Rule Harvesting deliverables: Rule requirement documents (rulebook)

Rule Requirement Document







What - Rule Harvesting deliverables: ODM decision service


ODM Decision Service






What - Rule Harvesting deliverables: ODM results document

ODM Results Document







Who - Rule Harvesting: Who?

Technical Business Analyst

Business Analyst Decision

Analyst

ODM Rules Developer

Lead SOA Developer

Data Integration Developer

Configuration Manager

(Governance) Rules SystemArchitect- Dave H






When - Rule Harvesting Progress

Decision Service #1’s Rule mining is:

98% complete (82 of 84 rule assets are modeled)

Decision Service #2’s Rule mining is:

7% complete (7 of 96 rule assets are modeled)






Decision Service Testing Harness






When - DS Testing Methodology

STEPS:1. Test existing

COBOL decisions (Yellow)

2. Test As-Is DS’s (Green)

3. Compare Yellow to Green

4. Test Future system decision services (Pink)

5. Compare Pink to Green and Yellow, then create reports (Blue)






Speeding up the Rule Harvesting process






Tools exist, to help streamline the Rule Harvesting process

Project Milestones to select one of these tools:

• Identify potential candidates (2 weeks)• Awareness demonstrations (4 weeks) – Completed• POC w/Pay Ability data (2 weeks) – Completed• Create Recommendation (1 week) – In Progress• Tool Selection, gather internal support (2 weeks) • Pilot + Training + Acceptance Criteria (3-4 weeks)

April

Wk1 Wk2 Wk3 Wk4

May

Wk1 Wk2 Wk3 Wk4

June

Wk1 Wk2 Wk3 Wk4

July

Wk1 Wk2 Wk3 Wk4

Tool Awareness POC Select Pilot

TrainingRecommendCandidates






Specifying the Tool Selection Criteria

Data Model Extraction• Create ER data models• Auto create data dictionary• Browse data files• Verify data relationships• Support sub-groups• Export diagrams to VISIO (others)

Business rule extraction• Identify diff patterns in rules• Export to rules engine• Develop test cases• Create system doc for user review• X-ref rules to code• Find duplicate rules• Classify rules mined

Business Process Extraction• Identify business processes • Drill down to sub-processes• Auto model as UML or use case• Descriptions of flow between activity diagrams and use cases• Export models as external files

Program Analysis• Search for specific info in all pgms• Drill into logic from prev search• Search across pgms, jcl, procs, etc• confine search to limited pgms• Create a diagram of jcl & pgm flows






Summary

Decision Modeling represents an significant step in the ability of the enterprise to deploy mission critical business rule applications in a timely fashion, which are complete, consistent, correct and current, delivering competitive advantage .

Decision Modeling provides a mechanism which allows the business to communicate accurately with IT clearly and minimizes rework.

Governance of rule artifacts is key to any effective, successful development effort of automating business decisions today.

Rule Harvesting from legacy code can be tedious and rewarding at the same time. The rule harvesting processes are often made easier with automated tools. Rule harvesting, produces a better decisions, when decision modeling and rule governance play a significant role in the harvesting process.





CONNECT WITH US:Public | Copyright © 2014 Prolifics 52

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